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MONTREALS-ON-THE-MEDITERRANEAN
For this OPEC to work, it needs Brown Canadas - fortunately there is more than enough brownlands available across The Sahara along The Blue Seashores.
Between ClubMed and OPEC, Brown Canadas can both be funded and built - France can provide the missing Leadership to make MediterraneanMegaCities happen. MandarinMegaCities is a great template that links Infrastructure Funding with Net Asset Values. And become another World Growth Engine, rather than remain a liability forever.

No one who is paying attention, would deny that migrant workers are treated poorly in many countries (notably in the Middle-East). However, the notion of a cartel. OPEC only succeeded as a cartel, when world oil demand outpaced supply (after 1969). That won't happen to cheap labor for decades if not centuries.

Nurses? Perhaps. Construction workers to build the next Burj Khalifa? Not so much. Of course, this is one of the key underlying problems. All grades of oil are mostly interchangeable (the sweet sour spread is modest). People are not fungible.

The answer is focused training and professional development wherever a strategic need can be identified rather than free market based training. Its not rocket science, and if it was you could train more rocket scientists to sort it. I find it incredible countries can have unemployment problems yet still import specialist labour

Sami Mahroum proposes an "OPEC for migrant Labor," which is a very good idea, given the extent of exploitation migrant workers face - a form of modern-day slavery. While the OPEC countries in the Middle East are rich labour-importers, many of the countries that export - often cheap and unskilled - labour are also in the Middle East. Oil-exporters there make constant headlines, because their citizens perpetrate serious abuse against foreign employees, and get away with impunity. The question is whether these labour exporting countries can muster enough courage to "consider the formation of an OPEC-like cartel for migrant workers."
According to Mahroum "Labor-exporting countries" aren't much "different from OPEC founding members - Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela - in 1960," whose attempt was to assert themselves. They needed to protect their "shared interests" as a bloc in a market dominated by the major multinational oil companies. It had expanded from its five founding countries to a membership of thirteen.
In this relationship between "rich labor-importing countries and poor labor-exporting countries," the former has the upper hand, exploiting the abject poverty of the latter. If a country acts decisively to defend their citziens' rights in Arab oil-rich countries, it will be shunned by these labour importers, who can "unilaterally tighten or loosen immigration or labor-market regulations, leaving exporters in a constant state of uncertainty." It explains why Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries that depend heavily on remittances keep quiet about abuse committed against their citizens.
The author suggests Philippines, Indonesia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, in Jordan, Yemen, Egypt and Morocco "to join with China, Mexico, India, and other major labor exporters" to form a "collective negotiation about wages, visa terms, and other conditions," allowing non-members to benefit from these "global norms". He argues that a "cartel would prevent labor-exporting countries from cannibalizing their own interests, as currently happens with bilateral arrangements." Indeed, such agreements between Gulf Cooperation Council countries and individual Southeast Asian countries "would undercut one another, with the result that they might end up with worse deals." The problem is that these countries are either immensely populous - China India, Indonesia - or they have a Muslim majority population. Besides many of them aren't exactly human rights champions themselves.
Why does the author reject the Internatonal Labour Organisation (ILO) or the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). The ILO had in recent years launched a campaign aimed at mobilising people around the world to lobby their governments to end modern-day slavery. The ITUC is the global voice of the world’s working people, with the mission to promote and defend workers’ rights and interests, through international cooperation between trade unions, global campaigning and advocacy within the major global institutions.
The author insists that a "labor-exporting cartel would bring order to an industry that has long been mired in controversy, damaging the reputations of more than a few labor-importing countries." But exporters will need to invest in human resources, that would allow them to "change the dynamics of labor supply and demand to the benefit of both workers – who would have new protections – and importing countries, which would have access to trained laborers to respond to rapid changes – often driven by technology – in economic conditions." This has to start with good governance. Unfortunately all of the labour-exporting countries are corrupt, with incompetent taxation system that brings in the badly-needed revenues to improve the livelihoods of their citizens, allowing them to stay and work in the country.

Under the current neo-liberalism vision, free trade (NAFTA, TTP, TTIP), free movement (US, EU, etc.), Human rights, Advances in Technology (demanding and requiring only high skilled labour), Globalisation in all its forms, economic pressures and the fall in commodity prices, the increase in the population of the “importers countries” who are faced with high unemployment in their own population, labour influx or outflow cannot be controlled or properly managed or be even needed any longer. Any limitation in labour movements would go against the basic principles of neo-liberalism. Retrenchment, stimulation of internal markets demand and birth control should be the orders of the day. Planet earth can no longer afford to have people with multiple wives and mistresses, to produce endless number of kids and so on. The human species have outnumbered to a large extent the animal species.

It is obvious from the spate of articles about developing economies that there is growing concern about this group.

The West is broadly flat economically, broadly flat in population growth, has an ageing demographic, has AI to deal with shortly, has an underlying and growing stubborn youth unemployment problem, and welfare expectations demanding taxation.

Developing economies alongside this want money one way or the other from the developed economies, expect a population explosion, have a major infrastructure need. Simply with a doubling population just to stand still they will have problems.

As such there are a number of articles that propose frameworks to try and obtain more money from the West or consolidate cash flows and it is very unlikely that will happen at the level to avoid major issues in those developing economies.

What is needed is more consideration as to whether population explosion is a sensible idea and if it occurs just what the implications are for those countries. It is painfully obvious that trade with the West with a flat population profile will not provide an answer and furthermore that aid budgets from the West are linked to Western GDP so will be broadly flat. Trade development therefore has to be between developing economies and whether it can keep up with population is very much the question. Simplistically it has to appear doubtful so a humanitarian disaster of a scale never seen before is a possibility

An interesting idea. As it is, the western world has been moving away from the union representation model, and the balance of power in labor markets has shifted accordingly. Most of us are very uncomfortable with the political backlash that is resulting.

Respect to the author for putting this piece out there, and actually coming up with something meaningful, instead of the usual essays asking readers to hold off on unkind judgments of globalization.

The crucial point underlying what I see here is this:

If balance of power in domestic labor markets is to be restored, one of the crucial ingredients is to prevent the exploitation of immigrant workers. Even a small-ish (10-20%) fraction of exploited immigrants will bring down the bargaining power of "native" employees.

Given the disparities in standard of living between source and destination countries for migrants this is hard to do. There is some sense in collective bargaining as a solution. (Prepare the fainting couches for the free-market people here.) Although you would think that starting with the domestic labor market is the way to go.

Ultimately, the thing that has to happen in response to automation and increased efficiency, is that hours-worked-per-person must go down. Something like a 30 hour work week for all may do it. Mandatory overtime, perhaps more than 1.5x, is a natural solution, IMO.

I can't disagree with your outline. However the main problem is there is still a lack of skilled workers in key areas so spreading the downsize will not happen. It follows that the spread will not be a spread it will be localised. There can only be further stratification of society. It has been estimated somewhere or other that only 21% of industrialised society activity is needed to fulfil the very basics of existence, presumably a very basic one and the 21% is a figure which I remember as being curiously precise, it does however leave the remaining 79% open to oversupply which is the area AI will target. Hard distribution keeps rearing its head but if volumes become too high it will never happen and the Swiss reaction to a UBI looks a likely mainstream outcome. Reducing the number of people should more realistically be reducing the increase in the number of people

I think you're basically right. "AI" or automation or tech or "better tools", by whatever name, will produce more with less effort and at the same time put people out of work.

That's wouldn't be new. The timescale of the obsolescence for industrial skills is now a lot shorter than a the time of a person's working career (~40+ years for a person to work). So without a doubt the old "solution" of early retirement isn't going to hold up any longer, as the acceleration of tech keeps going.

If we have any kind of egalitarian ideas, it gets worse. In recent decades, in low cost-of-labor places, the amount of work being done was going up, while the first world was getting de-industrialized. Markets are supposed to equalize this by driving up wages in China/mexico etc but again, happens slower than a human lifetime.

I see a few alternatives.

1. make-work. run the world the way we do maintenance on the streets where I live. Cut open pavement. Excavate earth. Replace pipe #1. Fill in earth. Rebuild pavement. Cut open pavement. Excavate earth. Replace pipe #2. Fill in earth. Rebuild pavement. Cut open pavement. Excavate earth. Replace pipe #3. etc... We can afford it, probably. Inefficient and sadistic, if you think about it.

1b. government programs to do obviously useful things that our current system fails miserably at (subsidize training and hiring of health care workers? duh?)

2. Soft redistribution, by reducing the workweek, drastically if neeed. Going from 60 hours to 40 hours was seen as an impossible civilization-collapsing proposal once. Less inefficient than #1, and and the best IMO.

3. Hard redistribution. Just hand out cash for those forced into early retirement by tech change. Not the end of the world. Though seems a little weird to have some people working 50 hours and some working none.

4. No redistribution, and invest the money you save into repressing the large numbers of people with lots of time on their hands and unhappy feelings about the "system". Unemployed can become police or soldiers to control the remaining unemployed?

5. Do nothing. Have faith in the power of unregulated markets to sort things out.

AI is projected to eliminate circa 30% of jobs. AI is synthetic labour and will move labour into oversupply. The consequence has to be less need for immigrants, more resistance to immigrants and elsewhere more wanting to be migrants. Oversupply of labour will destroy any attempt at unionisation and stratify society based on skill level. In the UK very roughly a 5% migrant inflow pushed lower level wages down by 6 to 7% according to some. What do you think AI will do.

As KSA production policy has shown OPEC to be a failure it is not sound model. The idea the freshly unemployed be deployed as an army of waiters or landscape gardeners is worthy of Gullivers Travels. All in all a hugely entertaining piece

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